


if we were made of water

by keouil



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Broken Marriage But They Are Trying, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: from my tippy toes, that i used to limp around your big ego.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	if we were made of water

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtVaIsXOLZ0).

the sound of the front door closing jolted her from sleep. sasuke was late again.

not an unusual occurrence in itself, she thought. truth be told sakura never really minded his late night comings and goings, but only because she knows she has no right to mind. she understands the full gravity of what she got herself into and is reminded of it every time he comes home at the dead of night without telling her and doesn’t even have the common decency to be quiet about it.

sasuke moved like liquid silk on instinct. he never disrupted the flow of his own rhythm nor others, because he learned to blend with the shadows far too young for him to unlearn it now.

so when he does this, as in discard his heavy boots with a noisy grunt and aggressively shed his combat gear that he aimlessly throws into the couch despite the many times she told him not to – it is deliberate. he is loud because he wants to be.

and sakura knows.

just like how she knows he will take his time paying respects to the tamaya by the door (for okasan, otosan, aniki, and sometimes she thinks himself); just like he does after every mission, because he was still an uchiha son through and through.

after that he will get on the shower to wash off the day’s grime where he takes even longer. he’s actually more of a closet neat freak than her, although he’d never care to admit it out loud. not that he admitted anything to her ever.

then he will carry his tired feet and aching arm all the way to the second floor, as he makes his way to the first door on the left – their shared bedroom – steps growing quieter as he grows closer.

as if on cue, she hears the sound of a door opening.

her heart skips a beat. sakura braces herself for this next part, imparted it in her mind after the first time because being unguarded in front of this man is as good as a death wish. trying her very best to mimic someone in deep sleep, eyes wired shut and laboured breathing, the whole theatrics.

because then, sasuke stares.

he doesn’t do it too long and certainly not every night, but long enough for her to grow conscious and uncomfortable and anxious. in those tense moments of guarded silence she forces her body not to snap its eyes open and pin him with a glare, demanding _why_. 

sometimes he comes close, with the ghost of a touch or a whisper of a caress managing to snake its way into her sensitive skin. she can feel him near her when he’s only a hair’s breath away, yet she knows better than to lean into his misplaced fingers or reciprocate their deceptive gentleness.

but most of the time he just stands and stares. tonight is no different.

when sasuke is done with his nightly ritual of observing/stalking/looking and she can feel her lungs return to normal, the next part is automatic. she feels the mattress dip under his weight and some shuffling around until he finds a comfortable position to rest for the night. once sasuke settles, he doesn’t move an inch until the next morning.

but sakura knows she isn’t safe until she goes over her chakra with a fine toothed comb and match it with his erratic one; more than once she’s woken up with a kunai to her throat because he thought the sudden spike in energy was an intruder. but she knows it’s merely a leftover habit from living in high-strung environments for so many years.

her heart would ache for that alone if she still had any of it left to give him.

because really, it’s all this extra care to accommodate sasuke _again_ in a life she was supposed to live for herself now, that makes sakura think of how little she’s grown since twelve.

* * *

when he said _i need a wife_ and all she replied in return was _i see_ – that should have been the first sign.

if not the two decades spent pining over a boy and getting rejected at every turn, if not the screaming at his back of full promises he discarded half-heartedly, if not the knife to his back or the chidori to her heart – none of those mattered in the grand scheme of all things sasuke and sakura. where there are too many expectations to be met and none the people left to work towards it.

it was precisely this, the after to their supposedly happily ever, that rings above all else.

* * *

sasuke opens the door quietly, but shuts it loudly.

he knows it’s a petty move. especially when sakura saw right through it the first time he not-so-subtly dropped all mission regalia and woven coat and everything else he could make a show of dropping quite intentionally, if just to get a rise from her. a break from their monotonous silence that surprisingly he isn’t solely responsible for this time.

since she said i do, she hasn’t spoken another word since.

aside from the check-ups she took upon herself to do when he returned early from a mission and they were both home, aside from when she bounced downstairs dressed in casual clothes and asked if he wanted anything not tomatoes for her grocery run, aside from every other mandatory brushing of their paths that egged her to forcefully acknowledge he existed within her space, out of pure _obligation_ \- those were the only times his wife talked to him.

and it eats him up every day.

he thinks maybe he deserves it, maybe even believes he does. for asking her abruptly and without preamble, just to get it out of his chest and exhaust the only option he ever really considered. because if she said no, then that was it. it wasn’t that no one else would have done, it’s that there was _never really anyone else_.

but then she shocks him by doing the stupidest and arguably most irrational thing she has ever done – she says yes. 

now he had to earn it.

after he says his proper greetings with the usual _okaasan i am eating well_ and _otosan i finally made jonin_ and _aniki i miss you_ ; he adds a discreet, barely inscrutable _tadaima_ just for her.

he doesn’t take too long in washing himself up, if anything he lingered because _she_ lingered. if he breathed deeply, he could almost feel the silky locks of her vanilla-scented hair put him in a bewitching trance; or how her rose-lathered snow skin could just as well engulf him in a soft embrace. he stays on longer because this appropriation of the senses of her was the only way he could _feel_ her.

then he slowly makes his way to their bedroom, careful to put extra care in his steps and levelling his chakra down. she may have woken up from the dozens of time he’s purposely made his loud entrance, but always by the time he makes it up she’s either fast asleep again or just chose to ignore him entirely.

when he opens the door he’s greeted by the same scene he’s always seen – yet the air in his lungs escapes him all the same.

she had her back to him, with her lovely silhouette just short of forming the most elegant line of figures he’s ever seen. her primrose hair faded into an almost effervescent hue, taking on a dimmer shade accompanied by the natural translucence the moonlight shined on her body. she was femininity embodied, and wore its colours impeccably well.

in that exact moment and like all the ones he’d found her like this – haruno sakura was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

sometimes he’s overcome with this very feeling and his treacherous body betrays his iron mind, where he feels himself inching closer to get a better view of the beauty of her.

some nights, when he comes home from putting a hole in someone’s chest or laying them to rest with his eyes, he touches her. like feathers of a flightless dove; hovering just enough for him to feel her smooth bareness and even smell the familiarity of everything she had become to him. he ghosts his touches like he ghosts every part of him that made him long for her in the first place. 

both the shells of him he couldn’t let her see but she knows exists in his every nightmare when he wakes up clutching the covers, or when he mistakes her advances as aggression and he is reflexively on the defense, or when his mind plays tricks on him and makes him see people who aren’t there and he is lightning fast with grabbing the kunai under his bed.

but when sasuke kills yet another man with his only arm, he wants nothing more than to hold her close and breathe in her essence. when he stares someone down while the world spinned in on them, he longs for the next time he can stare at her just like this and feel himself slowly finding his footing again.

but he knows they weren’t ready for that just yet. maybe one day she will look at him again like how he was looking at her now, but they have lost too many years to broken bonds and blood shed; that he knows it will take even longer to replace it with full promises and new life.

* * *

when sakura wakes the next morning, sasuke is curled up right behind her.

she recognises this as a night gone horribly long just like those that have passed. he had another nightmare and must’ve instinctively sought for some warmth but stopped himself just in-between the searching, because that could have been a line crossed in a path they weren’t prepared to walk.

she places a hesitant kiss on his cheek, as thankyou for the consideration.

* * *

when sasuke wakes up to an empty bed, he expects it.

she never slept in, not just because there were always patients to be healed or medicine to be practiced, but because she never wanted to. he’s long accepted this and trained himself not to be disappointed, he owed her that much at least.

but when he comes down and finds breakfast ready, he thinks maybe he can start expecting more.


End file.
